Believe me when I say developing effective wellbeing strategies can yield a boatload of benefits for both companies and their employees.

When you leverage company data, implement at-work health screenings, and incentivize healthy habits, you can effectively target the company’s most costly and prevalent health conditions while encouraging positive behavior changes.

Here I’ll explore four key strategies to optimize health programs and maximize return on investment, as supported by the findings of the Rand Wellness Program Study.

# 1 Use Company Data for Targeted Intervention:

To effectively target costly and prevalent health conditions, employers should leverage company data, including health claims and biometric reports.

By analyzing this information, you’ll be able to identify the top chronic conditions affecting your workforce.

Armed with these insights, you can tailor company health programs to address specific conditions and allocate resources accordingly, leading to a higher return on investment.

#2 Implement At-Work Health Screenings and Encourage Regular Checkups:

This may seem like a no-brainer, but work health screenings provide valuable opportunities for early detection and intervention.

Organizing company-wide screenings will enable you to identify potential health risks and encourage employees to seek regular primary care checkups.

Proactive monitoring enables prompt treatment and management of chronic conditions, helping to reduce healthcare costs and improve overall employee well-being.

#3 Promote and Model Healthy Habits:

To address behaviors that contribute to chronic conditions, employers should focus on promoting and modeling healthy habits within the workplace.

By offering educational resources, organizing workshops, and providing access to wellness programs, companies can empower employees to adopt healthier lifestyles.

Modeling healthy habits among leadership and management also encourages employees to follow suit, creating a culture of well-being throughout the organization.

#4 Reward Achievement of Health Goals:

To reinforce positive behavior changes, establish a system of incentives that reward employees for achieving their health goals.

This can range from financial rewards to recognition programs or additional benefits.

By linking rewards to the attainment of health objectives, employers create a motivating environment that encourages employees to actively participate in their own wellness journey.

Demonstrated ROI and Benefits:

This Rand Wellness Program Study analyzed a decade of wellness program data from a Fortune 100 company, revealing impressive outcomes.

By targeting chronic conditions and incentivizing healthy behaviors, the company achieved a whopping monthly savings of $136 per employee, along with a staggering 30% reduction in hospital stays and that was back in 2014! Not to mention that implementing daily lifestyle behavior changes resulted in an average cost savings of $6 per.

These figures, which do not account for other benefits such as reduced absenteeism and enhanced productivity, highlight the significant impact of targeted health programs.

To wrap things up…

Targeting the most costly and prevalent health conditions within the workforce requires a multi-faceted approach that combines data analysis, at-work health screenings, behavior modification, and incentives.

By investing in employee well-being and promoting healthy habits, employers can not only reduce healthcare costs but also foster a culture of health and productivity.

You’ll benefit from the positive impact on employee morale, job satisfaction, and overall organizational performance.

It’s clear that targeted health programs are a sound investment for companies who want to optimize their workforce’s well-being. Want to learn more? 

To your health!

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Effective corporate wellness initiatives do more than keep your employees healthy, happy, and productive.

Research has shown over and over that well-designed and developed wellness programs increase a company’s bottom line.

And frequently that success is just a matter of identifying and addressing your employees’ chronic medical conditions.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as many as six out of ten adults suffer from chronic medical conditions,

And, believe it or not, a whopping 86% of every medical dollar spent on sick care goes to treating these.

So how well do you know where your company stands in the chronic condition department? Here’s the first critical step toward finding out.

Get a baseline!

You need to assess the state of your employees’ current health and gauge your company’s position on seeking the best health outcomes for your workforce.

Once you understand these two items, your company can begin designing and implementing programs that will benefit both your workers and the employer.

But how do you begin to gather this information? Here are some steps you can take.

Conduct employee surveys

This may seem like a no-brainer, but you might be surprised at how many companies skip this crucial step.

You’ll want to gauge your employees’ interest in bettering their health.

Surveying the workforce will help you to weigh what good health boils down to for them and whether they’re motivated to do something about it by participating in a company-wide wellness program.

If the idea of creating a survey makes your head spin, don’t fret. There’s lots of CDC guidance on ways to begin.

Identify health risks that drive top costs

Identifying health risks will help inform you of the most important programs to implement. Begin by conducting clinical screenings and biometric assessments.

There are Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations in place governing health risk assessments, so I’d advise getting legal counsel before proceeding.

But for now, to gain an overview you can consult CDC guidance on workplace wellbeing programs.

You’ll also want to review Equal Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidance on ways employee wellbeing initiatives relate to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA).

HIPAA will also apply when a workplace wellbeing program falls under a group health plan.

Bear in mind that although your company’s top cost driver may be cancer, it is not among the most common health risks.

And often, employees that have the highest health risks don’t even know it yet. For instance, around 20% of those with diabetes and 80% with prediabetes are blissfully unaware that they have the condition. 

Many employees typically ignore milder symptoms like exhaustion and simply drag themselves through the day. People with high cholesterol don’t even get symptoms.

That’s why you can’t rely on symptoms to indicate the state of an employee’s health.

Chronic conditions may not be costing the company yet, but down the line as symptoms progress, these employee medical conditions could cost the company a LOT.

Not knowing the degree to which employees are at risk of health emergencies like a coma or heart attack could definitely impact the bottom line.

So how do you begin to assess your company’s health risks?

Take stock of current healthcare costs and ways employees utilize health plans

To get a firm grip on the overall picture and target your efforts, you’ll need to identify the most prevalent health conditions, worrisome health trends, and pore through medical and pharmaceutical claims data.

Your company’s group health insurance provider will be happy to provide this information. Also, consult this guidance on finding healthcare costs data.

Stay laser-focused on the medical conditions that your employees most frequently suffer from and that drive top costs.

(Keep in mind that obesity is a chronic health condition, but doctors may choose not to code it as a diagnosis but rather as a lifestyle issue.) Nevertheless, obesity leads to all kinds of serious health conditions, such as these listed by the CDC :

• All causes of death (mortality).
• High blood pressure (hypertension).
• High LDL cholesterol, low HDL cholesterol, or high levels of triglycerides (dyslipidemia).
• Type 2 diabetes.
• Coronary heart disease.
• Stroke.
• Gallbladder disease.
• Osteoarthritis (a breakdown of cartilage and bone within a joint).
• Sleep apnea and breathing problems.
• Many types of cancer.
• Low quality of life.
• Mental illness such as clinical depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders.
• Body pain and difficulty with physical functioning.

Because doctors frequently don’t code obesity as a diagnosis, you will need to rely on more anecdotal evidence to identify that condition.

But as you can see, to minimize health care spending it’s worth the effort!

So how do you target the most costly and prevalent health conditions and the behaviors that cause them?

1. Lean into company data for health claims and biometric reports to determine your workforce’s top chronic conditions.
2. Provide at-work health screenings and give employees incentives to get regular primary care checkups.
3. Then zero in on promoting (and modeling) healthy habits. And reward your employees each time they establish and meet a health goal.

When you target your company’s health program dollars to your employees’ most prevalent chronic conditions, you’ll see the highest return on investment.

That’s what the Rand Wellness Program Study found in their analysis of 10-year wellness program data provided by a Fortune 100 company.

Managing chronic conditions resulted in monthly savings of $136 per employee and lowered hospital stays by a staggering 30%.

The company saved $6 per employee from incentivizing daily lifestyle behavior changes such as:

• Taking 30-minute walks
• Healthy eating
• Smoking cessation
• Stress reduction
• Curbing alcohol consumption
• And reducing waistlines to less than half of height.

Those savings didn’t even take into account reductions in absenteeism, enhanced productivity, and the savings from decreasing employee turnover.

In addition, when employees adopted the habits above, they saved as much as 50% on their own healthcare.

Final thoughts

When companies promote wellness in the workplace they can reap significant financial benefits not to mention the rewards that come with a healthy workforce. And that’s a fine thing.

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Does this sound familiar? You kick off your corporate wellness initiative with a bang. Employees are enthusiastic and affirming.

You feel heartened that your hard work getting the program off the ground is paying off. But as weeks go by, employee enthusiasm begins to wane.

Many of your people begin to lose interest in program offerings.

And before you know it, employees are dropping out, and those who are still participating do it half-heartedly.

So what can you do?

Experienced wellness providers are familiar with these setbacks. And with that in mind, they create workplace wellbeing strategies that are effective and inclusive.

Programs that inspire, motivate, and engage. Visualize having a corporate wellness coach who will help you successfully implement those strategies.

When you work together, you can anticipate far better participation rates – from beginning to end. Here are 7 strategies that will put you on the path to success:

1. Let leaders show the way

Successful programming begins at the top. Yes, it’s vital for leaders to walk the talk. When leadership and management show enthusiasm, you’ll experience far more dynamic results.

Start by establishing a Wellness Committee and getting your wellness champions to begin spreading the message.

Select committee members and champions from various departments and divisions and all levels of authority.

2. Make things easy

HR leaders tell me their people sometimes say they’re reluctant to participate in health and wellness programs for the following reasons:

• No time
• Little interest
• Not aware of offerings
• Barriers to access.

That’s why it’s vital to communicate, communicate, communicate – and do it effectively. It means going beyond posters, (though these can be effective, too).

Use every form of messaging at your disposal from letters to text messages to promote wellness initiatives, health tips, and your EAP.

Another way to make healthy choices easy for employees is to make healthy options the default, helping to maximize awareness.

Think of replacing pizza with whole-grain tortillas and nutritious fixin’s. Or replacing the candy in the vending machines with trail mix, Pirates Booty, and low-sugar energy bars.

If you’re going to hang posters, make them intriguing and fun.

For instance, two Samford students who wanted to see whether positive messaging would increase staircase usage put up posters that said “Be healthy and take the stairs.” On each step, a small sign showed the number of calories a stair climber would burn.

So post interesting health and nutrition messages in highly trafficked locations.

Think elevators, restrooms, hallways, and coffee stations. Promote messages that encourage employees to simply stretch throughout the day.

3. Get to Know Your Employees

To design and implement a flourishing wellness strategy means learning about your employees’ wants and needs.

This involves sending out employee surveys and forming small focus groups to get feedback and bring barriers to light.

This way, your program will benefit from listening, learning, and gaining targeted insights.

To achieve maximum engagement and participation, you’ll need to take key demographic information into account.

For example, you’ll want to assess any language and/or literacy barriers, whether employees have computer access at home and at work, and any job requirements and restrictions.

You’ll also want to tweak specific aspects of your health and wellness program to give employees with disabilities and health restrictions or remote employees maximum participation opportunities.

4. Brand and promote

Driving high participation and engagement in a wellness program involves four crucial components when it comes to messaging:

• Develop a wellness brand for the program
• Find your program a “home”
• Design media and materials to educate and update employees and give shout-outs for successes
• Personalize messaging

Give your program a logo and catchy name. This way, employees will easily be able to consistently recognize and utilize the program.

Once you’ve designed and developed the program, give it a “home,” such as an internal wellness portal or website where employees can easily access information.

Companies with a vibrant culture of health use technology, team meetings, wellness committees, and targeted communications that enable employees to stay connected and share information.

Use your company newsletter or email blasts to broadcast success stories and testimonials. When you recognize your health champions, other employees want to climb aboard the health train.

Lastly, your employees are more liable to pay attention to your program when they see you’re making an effort to communicate relevant information to them.

Giving them health tips and resources is one way to grab and hold their interest.

5. Keep updating

Having a great wellness program launch is important, but you’ll need to go beyond that enthusiastic kick-off event. Don’t drop the ball after the initial excitement is over.

The secret to maintaining interest and engagement is keeping things fresh. Regularly add new features that make employees excited to participate.

Survey employees to discover the health topics that they would like to cover in the program.

Use Facebook, YouTube videos, and your company web portal to capture employee interest and maintain engagement and participation.

You’ll want to keep programming fresh and fun. Hold team challenges, offer incentives for reaching goals, and include lively and entertaining initiatives.

6. Make sure there’s a payoff

Consider your company’s criteria for offering incentives. Do you want to motivate employees to participate, influence their health outcomes, or some combination of both of these?

Financial incentives can motivate employees to take part in on-site screenings, for example, or sign up for an employer-funded group health plan.

But these won’t necessarily result in long-term behavioral changes.

But if your program infuses fun, humor, respect, and community, you’ll provide employees with an emotional connection which is far more likely than an incentive to pursue the behavioral changes they require to embrace wellness.

7. Personalize things

Flourishing wellness programs feel personal. You’ll want to provide enough screening processes, resources, ideas, and educational materials that employees want to create their own individual health and wellness goals.

That way, you’ll encourage employees as they celebrate early successes and reap meaningful rewards.

These early successes will motivate employees so that they’ll want to achieve more challenging goals.

Promoting success means offering encouragement, tools, and resources, such as health and wellness coaching, fitness challenges, and meaningful rewards.

The upshot?

As a seasoned corporate wellness coach, I can attest that creating effective and inclusive wellbeing strategies will inspire, motivate, and engage your employees. And if you’d like to explore how we could create a successful program together, let’s get in touch.

To your health!

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Company culture is something that nobody much thinks or talks about, but everyone feels. Have you ever thought of your culture as a crayon box? No? It’s okay, we’ll get to that soon. The important point here is that our company cultures are made up of subcultures. These can take on their own distinct characteristics. Subcultures are the intertwined experiences, problems, beliefs, and behaviors of specific segments of a company’s population. These might be shift workers, for instance, or the sales department. Subcultures can also form around religious, racial, or gender lines, sexual preferences, or geography. Most employees fit into several groups. There are lots of nuanced and powerful subcultures!

To get back to our analogy, you might think of culture as a Crayola box, while subcultures are the individual crayon color groupings (think purple and periwinkle!) And while developing a workplace culture of health is crucial to a company reaching its full potential, it will never reach the pinnacle without identifying and supporting healthy subcultures.

How do subcultures differ in their health needs? 

Some subculture health challenges are obvious, while others are more subtle. Take shift workers, for example. Did you know this subculture is subject to numerous health risks, ranging from gastrointestinal disorders, insomnia, and a heightened risk of accidents? Shift workers are also prone to heart disease, diabetes, ulcers, and depression. Those in your LGBTQ subculture are at greater risk for smoking and substance abuse, depression and anxiety, and suicide attempts.

None of the individual members of these subcultures can function at their best if they don’t live and work within a supportive health culture. That’s why managers need to carefully consider the ways they may influence their work teams’ subcultures. It’s really the only way to accommodate employee well-being. Do managers respect boundaries? Managers and leaders need to emphasize that employees should honor both work time and private time. Computers and smartphones can really get in the way of separating the two – especially for a remote worker subculture.

To help with this, managers and leaders need to overcome common misconceptions. Many remote employees think spending more time working makes them a more valuable team member. They often want to prove that they’re carrying their load, so they put their noses to the grindstone at all hours. That eats into activities that support employee well-being – food prep, exercise, and family time to name a few. So set boundaries!

Give your remote team permission to relax and recuperate. Especially pay attention to email etiquette. Employees and managers can decide what hours are optimal for sending and receiving emails. HINT: it’s not dinner time or the wee, small hours of the morning. Consider the work environment for a remote worker. Are they staggering just a few feet from their computer to the bed every night? Do they suffer from poor circulation, tension headaches, isolation, or depression? Spend some time devising a strategy and creating the infrastructure to support your remote workforce.

Ways to Foster Healthy Subcultures 

If you have some discretion on resource allocation, consider that building and nurturing healthy environments needn’t cost an arm and a leg. You can support well-being by bringing nature indoors. Yes, nature does improve well-being. Instead of Christmas tchotchke that goes to die in some desk drawer, consider a gift that can flourish on top of the desk. A minor investment in plants can reap big health benefits. Just don’t pick high-maintenance varieties. Dying plants do nothing to improve health or morale!

But you don’t even need to spend that much. It could just be a matter of finding rooms or other areas for employees to “borrow,” where they can hold volunteer planning, club events, and the like. How about a corner of the outdoor facilities where workers can participate in pick-up flag football? How can you promote goodwill by being generous with your physical resources?

Your efforts will be multiplied if you provide the infrastructure for subcultures to flourish in. Let’s face it, it’s easy for workers to feel like just another face in the crowd. Developing a process for smaller subculture groups to participate can enhance the work experience. Think gay-straight alliance meetings, ethnic luncheons, or bicycle race planning. If your company has mindfulness programming, encourage your work team subcultures to participate together. First off, this will help to normalize the experience for those who think meditation is just for “flakes.” It helps show that bosses are on board, boosts peer support, and helps teams to normalize the practice so they can deploy it at stressful times. Ohm-ing together begets staying together.

Perhaps groups are unaware that these solutions are even possible, so it’s important to put out a message or launch a campaign for groups that would like to gather for healthy events so that they can “apply” for resources. If your company can afford it, providing small grants to any subculture applicants that can demonstrate how they would effectively utilize the money to promote well-being would be a great investment in your overall wellness culture. Those subculture groups could use the money in targeted ways to bolster their well-being and achieve their goals.

Take warehouse workers for example. One common issue for them is over-exertion or repetitive stress injuries. Might they benefit from a grant to bring in a functional medicine specialist to address their muscle imbalances and suggest ways to strengthen their muscles, helping to restore their bodies’ natural functioning?

You can see why identifying subcultures and their health needs matter. It’s vital to provide flexibility and freedom for your employees to express themselves authentically within the subcultures they are a part of and to embody their own dazzling Crayola colors.

So where do we start? 

Here at LifeUp, we take subcultures and their health needs seriously. Our team is built on a foundation of diversity – both in the wide-ranging health specialties we offer and our cultural backgrounds. Here are some of our offerings:

• Functional medicine
• Mindset and performance coaching
• Meditation and mindfulness
• Yoga, Ayurveda, and sound meditation
• Nutrition
• Stress management
• Creativity and play
• Sleep, rest, and recovery expertise.

We embrace authenticity, diverse communities, and teamwork. The people who make up your subcultures will never function at their best if they don’t live and work within a supportive corporate health environment. Our Healthy Habits program provides the “a-ha” moments to transform employee wellness – no matter your subculture crayon box.

To your health!

Derek

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What if your employees had the means to make corporate health and wellness an integral part of their workday? How might that impact your people’s engagement levels? How about your company’s productivity and its ability to attract and retain talent? Ultimately, how would it affect the bottom line?

But wellness is more than a program. Instead, think of it as a way to improve your quality of life and help your people show up as their best selves every day. And believe me, health matters in your business setting.

Consider these employee responses to an Aon Hewitt survey that asked for their opinions on workplace wellness initiatives offered by employers:

Yes, wellness programs matter. Here are some more reasons why:

1. Your company foots the bill for unhealthy employees.
2. Building a healthy workforce provides many benefits beyond ROI.

Let’s jump in…

The Onerous Costs of “Sick-Care”

Health insurance and claims costs are soaring exponentially. You are trying to minimize cost increases while remaining competitive for marketplace talent. But your foundational strategies are not keeping up with the realities of an unhealthy workforce. A reactive care model is just not sustainable.

Our country’s healthcare system wasn’t designed to help prevent the onset of disease but rather to diagnose and treat illness. Hence, the American healthcare system, and the fallback position of many companies, is based on an acute care model, where the focus is to address (instead of prevent) urgent issues and manage chronic diseases. This reactive approach is expensive and inefficient. It’s why more and more companies are embracing a new model that promotes proactive health and wellness.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), preventable chronic conditions are at an all-time high in the US. They are also a major contributor to the costs of employee medical claims and health insurance premiums. The CDC lists five chronic conditions or risk factors:

• High blood pressure
• Diabetes
• Smoking
• Physical inactivity
• Obesity

These cost US employers a whopping $36.4 billion a year because of employees missing days of work. Obesity alone increases job absenteeism due to injury or sickness by three days per year. And post-pandemic, obesity has risen. Annually, productivity losses due to obesity range from $271 to $542 for each obese employee. When calculating the cost-effectiveness of interventions, it’s vital to take reductions in absenteeism into account.

Research shows that employees of normal weight cost $3,830 per year on average for a covered medical, sick day, short-term disability, and worker’s comp claims combined. Employees that were morbidly obese cost over double that amount, or $8,067 – and that was in 2011!

In all, US employers spent an estimated $13,728 per employee on healthcare in 2020, and this spending will only continue to rise. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services projects that national health costs will increase at an average annual rate of 5.4% until 2028.

Your company may have little control over many of the factors that drive up healthcare costs, but one area you can influence is the incidence of your employees’ unhealthy habits. Because here’s the thing, all the above risk factors can be controlled – and often prevented – with proven, achievable lifestyle changes. Yes, getting your employees to move more, eat healthily, reduce stress, sleep better, and work on detrimental habits can pay huge dividends.

In fact, supermarket chain H-E-B found that over time, moving just 10 percent of employees from high and medium-risk to low-risk status yielded an ROI of 6 to 1! But investing in workplace well-being has tangible benefits beyond monetary savings. Let’s explore…

Going beyond ROI

Here are just a few of the additional benefits of providing a wellness program for your workforce:

More likely to stay, more likely to recommend

Providing corporate wellness services is an investment in attracting and retaining talent. Research shows that the availability of well-designed wellness programs improves employees’ net promoter score (eNPS). Employees with access to 7-8 programs are one and a half times more likely to remain with their employer. 89% of workers at companies that provide wellness initiatives are more likely to recommend their company as a good place to work. Programs that help employees manage chronic conditions and provide a physical work environment that promotes healthy decision-making have the biggest impact on eNPS. And ultimately, attracting and retaining talent reduces the burden of an already busy HR staff.

Increased productivity

Companies that promote well-being can experience 21% higher productivity. And compromised employee health is one of the top reasons for lagging productivity. The last thing your company needs is a sluggish and mediocre workforce. Taking part in company wellness programs involves developing healthy habits, such as regular exercise, stress reduction, improved sleep hygiene, and good nutrition, that are linked to more productive behaviors. Better health results in a more focused and motivated workforce.

For instance, one Harvard study demonstrated that the benefits of exercise go beyond physical. Evidence suggests that it boosts mental abilities like:

• Improved cognitive function
• Sharper memory
• Enhanced creativity
• Better concentration

Employees that exercise regularly are for the most part healthier than their sedentary co-workers. This results in fewer sick days and medical appointments, and overall reduced absenteeism.

Better nutrition also matters. One Brigham Young study of nearly 20,000 employees found that those with unhealthy diets were 66% more likely to report lower productivity. But employees who eat right get more done in a day.

As Virgin’s Richard Branson advises corporate leaders, “Take care of your employees and they will take care of your business. It’s as simple as that. Healthy, engaged employees are your top competitive advantage.”

Bottom line: better habits lead to better health and better outcomes. So, what positive outcomes might your company gain by implementing a comprehensive corporate wellness solution?

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Did you know that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that six out of ten adults live with a chronic medical condition? This type of statistic is why you might consider focusing on promoting wellness in the workplace because effective corporate wellness programs don’t just make employees healthier and more productive, they will positively impact a company’s bottom line over time. For most companies, addressing chronic disease will yield the best results, considering 86% of all medical dollars are spent on chronic conditions. But where do you start?

Step 1: Getting a Baseline

The first critical step toward creating health and wellbeing programs for employees is to obtain information about your current workforce’s health – and your organization’s willingness to improve health outcomes based on this information. This will enable your company to design and implement programs that benefit both employers and employees. Here are some steps you can take to obtain this information: 

Step 2: Find your top return health areas

Now it’s time to dig into the insurance data, clinical screenings, and biometric assessments you’ve collected to closely scrutinize your findings. You’ll want to focus your efforts on the areas that align with the company’s overall health strategy and provide the highest return. Concentrate on addressing the most prevalent health risks and chronic conditions in your population. This will provide you with the highest ROH – return on the health of your employees over the long term. Over time, ROH will naturally lead to a positive ROI (return on investment). 

What will give you the highest ROH by directly targeting the most pervasive chronic conditions and costs among your people? Simple. Disease management and risk prevention. Let’s take the leading chronic conditions among individuals aged 18-64:

• hypertension (30%)
• cholesterol disorders (20%)
• respiratory diseases (19%)
• and diabetes (12%)

Obesity is both a chronic condition and a risk factor and tops the list at just under 42% of US adults. Obesity is responsible for heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and other chronic conditions. It is related to a dozen types of cancer, and the incidence of obesity-related cancers among young adults is rising rapidly. These chronic conditions are among the most prevalent causes of premature death and are almost always preventable. Chances are that your employee population will roughly mirror the statistics above. There’s also a good chance that the conditions are going undiagnosed among your working population. So how do you target these and the behaviors that lead to them? 

1. Dig into data such as health claims and biometric reports to identify the top chronic conditions.
2. Conduct health screenings and incentivize employees to get regular check-ups with their primary care providers. 

Then focus your company’s well-being initiatives around developing vital healthy habits – like eating better, moving more, drinking less alcohol, kicking the cigarette habit, and lowering stress levels – and reward employees for achieving measurable, controlled outcomes.

Final points to consider

Targeted, comprehensive health and well-being programs for employees clearly provide an identified return on investment. To give an example, the Rand Wellness Program Study analyzed 10-year data from a Fortune 100 company’s wellness program. Tellingly, managing chronic conditions generated a $136 savings per employee per month, and reduced hospital admissions by 30%. And lifestyle management generated a $6 savings per employee monthly – and these figures don’t include productivity gains, reduction in absenteeism and presenteeism, and the savings gained through less employee turnover! And it’s a win-win for everybody. If employees just develop the following five behavioral habits, on average they will save 33%-50% on their own healthcare:

• Walking 30 minutes daily
• Eating healthy foods
• Ceasing smoking
• Limiting alcohol consumption
• And getting their waistlines down to less than half their height. 

So, there you have it – promoting wellness in the workplace generates significant cost savings for a company and its individual employees. And that’s a beautiful thing.

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